29 July 2013

Several bananas were thrown at Italy's Integration Minister Cécile Kyenge during a political rally on Friday, report BBC and The Guardian. Kyenge is an eye surgeon who was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and emigrated to Italy more than 30 years ago.

[Kyenge] was giving a speech in the town of Cervia on the Adriatic coast on Friday. After the bananas narrowly missed the stage, she chided the unknown culprit for "wasting food". On Sunday she said that the unrelenting barrage of hostility since she became minister in April was more vicious than she had anticipated, but would not stop her doing her job.

"I cannot hide that at times I feel tired of the repetition of such serious insults. I did not expect them to be this strong," she told daily newspaper La Repubblica. "But I will not stop or dwell on the attacks themselves. I am trying to look ahead, to reflect on the discomfort that we must understand is behind these incidents and on how politics and society as a whole can best respond."

Since her inclusion in Enrico Letta's grand coalition prompted one MEP in the xenophobic Northern League to brand it a "bongo bongo" government, Kyenge has been the target of repeated racial abuse. Before her arrival in Cervia, police said they had found mannequins daubed with blood-red paint and bearing signs reading: "Immigration kills".

Italian football phenom Mario Balotelli has also been targeted by vicious racist abuse. Hundreds of Croatian fans hurled racist abuse, monkey chants" and threw several bananas at him during a June 2012 match.

11 May 2013

Italy's first Black cabinet minister has been targeted by so much "violent" racist abuse from right-wing politicians and neo-Nazi groups that "the government [has] authorized its anti-discrimination office to investigate," reports AP.

Forty-eight-year old eye surgeon Cecile Kyenge was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and emigrated to Italy more than 30 years ago. Kyenge's April 27 appointment as Minister for Integration has sparked a "much-needed discussion on race and immigration" across Italy, notes TIME.

Kyenge has proposed overhauling the process for children born in Italy to immigrant parents to obtain Italian citizenship. These children can only apply when they are 18 under current law.

"Kyenge wants to impose her tribal traditions from the Congo," said Mario Borghezio, a member of the European Parliament for Italy’s anti-immigration Northern League in an April 30 radio interview. "She seems like a great housekeeper," he added. "But not a government minister."

Even in Italy, a country all too often permeated by casual bigotry, Borghezio’s words were a step too far. An online petition calling for him to be sanctioned or evicted from his post has gathered more than 75,000 signatures, and the Northern League’s leader, Roberto Maroni, a former Interior Minister, has come under pressure to denounce him. Maroni himself reacted with hostility to Kyenge, voicing opposition to her proposal on citizenship.

Meanwhile, the Italian government has launched an investigation into neo-fascist websites, on which Kyenge has been denigrated as a "Congolese monkey" and "the black anti-Italian." Kyenge denounced the attacks as representative of a minority opinion and called for the public at large to respond. "I’m black and I’m proud of it," she said. "It’s important to underline that."

"[Kyenge] is one of two naturalised Italians in the government, both elected for the centre-left Democratic party. The other is a former international canoeist, Josefa Idem. The inclusion in the cabinet of blonde, German-born Idem, who won an Olympic gold medal and five world championships for Italy, caused no similar controversy.